The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for monitoring and controlling the flow of articles in a warehouse or other installation.
There exists a great variety of systems in which orders are filled by, for example, a central warehouse where items to be shipped to a given destination are manually, semiautomatically, or automatically picked, sorted, and routed to a shipping dock for shipment to, for example, retail stores. Typically, labels identifying the shipping destination are applied to articles as they are picked which labels are subsequently employed at a sorting location for the diverting of articles to a particular shipping area of the installation. U.S. Pat. No. 4,181,947 illustrates a sorting system which can be employed with such a system.
Where, however, a warehouse system is of relatively large size and it is capable of simultaneously handling a great number of orders, maintaining accurate information as to the status of individual orders being filled as well as the operational status of the entire system, while maintaining a maximum throughput efficiency, is virtually impossible with the systems of the prior art.